Super Specific Social Service: Essai’s Guide to Building Effective Service Projects

Working on creating a solid, stellar profile and wondering how to complete the picture? We’ve got you covered! Here’s your step-by-step guide to Super Specific Social Service!

Super Specific Social Service is, as the name suggests, super specific. It demonstrates a deep understanding of the challenges of a particular demographic and addresses them through a contextualized, impactful, and of course, verifiable interventions.

STEP 1: Identify your population

Who do you want to work with?

Where are they from?

How old are they?

What do they do? 

For example:
M wants to work with children from disadvantaged communities in Delhi NCR. She is super specific about:

  • Their age group: 10-15 years

  • Whether they go to school or not: No

STEP 2: Define the problem

What are some of the unique challenges they face?

What is one of the challenges you would like to address?*

*Note: this should be super specific, of course, but also super relevant: to their lives (and to your overall profile).

For example: 
M wants to help children ages 10-15 from disadvantaged communities in Delhi NCR who do not have access to formal education. Some of the challenges they might face are:

  • Child labor

  • Limited professional opportunities

  • Challenges in procuring daily necessities 

  • Mental health concerns

M aspires to study Psychology in college, so she is best equipped and most invested in tackling the mental health concerns that the children face.

STEP 3: Outline your solution

Your social service should be a perfect FIT: Fresh, Impactful, Timely.

Try to come up with solutions that are fresh and innovative, showing that you can creatively work towards building a better quality of life for your chosen population — going one step further to share what is inaccessible to them otherwise.

Your social service should, of course, also be impactful: at the end of the day, what matters most is that you create an intervention that contributes to meaningful change. Remember, this change should be verifiable — through surveys, photographic documentation, testimonials, and reports.

It should also be timely, demonstrating your understanding of the urgency of the situation as well as your continued commitment towards making a difference. 

For example:
M thinks of ways to tackle mental health concerns and decides to conduct a survey to better understand. She finds that the children struggle with thoughts of depression and anxiety often. What are the best ways to combat depression and anxiety, she wonders…

After brainstorming, she comes up with the perfect solution: she decides to set up mental health camps in low-income communities. 

STEP 4: Understanding what resources your require

What are the resources you require to make this happen? Think about:

  • Physical resources 

  • Financial resources 

  • Human resources

For example:
M makes a plan. To conduct 1 mental health camp, she will require a table, a chair, and 50 worksheets. She will require remuneration for the mental health professionals she will hire, which she will source through a fundraising campaign at her school. She will also need 2 volunteers to execute the camp.

STEP 5: Create a proposal 

For this, you’ll need a name for your project, a defined timeline, as well as a clear action plan. You should be able to present your proposal through multiple mediums, including: over email, as a PowerPoint presentation, and over call.

For example:
M decides to call her project “Help Desk”. She creates a proposal to share with the mental health professionals she wants to collaborate with. She creates a separate one for the NGOs she will host the camp at, making sure that they work with the same demographic. 

STEP 6: Time for action!

Once you have a team and partner NGO(s) to collaborate with, you’re ready to go! You can conduct a pilot to gauge the effectiveness of the project and build on it over time. 

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Your super specific social service engagement is an important part of your profile and helps you stand out as an involved, innovative, and invested member of society. For more ideas, you can check out our Case Studies here.